A Memory of Light

forced its way between Myk and Charn’s pikes. The officers wore breastplates, strangely wrapped in cloth of a variety of colors, while the common rank and file wore leather fitted with strips of metal. They all had their backs painted with strange patterns.
    The leader of the Sharan troop wielded a wicked mace, smashing one pikeman, then the other. The man shouted at Juilin, curses he didn’t understand.
    Juilin feinted, and the Sharan raised his shield, so Juilin rammed his spear into the man’s armor at the gap between breastplate and arm. Light, he didn’t even flinch! He smashed his shield into Juilin, forcing him back.
    The spear slipped from Juilin’s sweaty fingers. He cursed, reaching for his sword breaker, a weapon he knew well. Myk and the others fought nearby, engaging the rest of this Sharan squad. Charn tried to help Juilin, but the crazed Sharan brought his mace down on Charn’s head—splitting it in two like a cracked walnut.
    “Die, you bloody monster!” Juilin cried, leaping forward and ramming his sword breaker into the man’s neck just above the gorget. Other Sharans were moving quickly toward his position. Juilin fell back as the man in front of him collapsed and died. Just in time, as a Sharan to his left tried to take his head off with a broad swing of his sword. The tip of the sword went by his ear, and Juilin instinctively raised his own blade. His opponent’s weapon broke in two, and he quickly dispatched the man with a backhand slice to the man’s throat.
    Juilin scrambled to pick up his spear. Fireballs fell nearby, attacks from the Aes Sedai behind and the Sharans on the Heights ahead. Soil coated Juilin’s hair, and stuck in clumps to the blood on his arms.
    “Hold!” Juilin shouted to his men. “Burn you, we need to hold!”
    He attacked another Sharan who came at him. One of the pikemen raised his weapon in time to pin the man on the shoulder, and Juilin speared him through his leather-clad chest.
    The air trembled. His ears rang faintly from all of the explosions. Juilin pulled back, yelling orders to his men.
    He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be someplace warm, with Amathera, thinking about the next criminal he needed to catch.
    He figured that every man on the field felt they should be someplace else. The only thing to do was keep on fighting.

    You look good in black, Androl sent to Pevara as they moved through the enemy army on top of the Heights.
    That, she replied back, is something one should never, never say to an Aes Sedai. Ever.
    His only response was a sense of nervousness through the bond. Pevara understood. They—wearing inverted weaves of the Mask of Mirrors— walked among Darkfriends, Shadowspawn and Sharans. And it was working. Pevara wore a white dress and a black cloak over it—those weren’t part of a weave—but anyone looking into her cloak’s hood would see the face of Alviarin, a member of the Black Ajah. Theodrin wore the face of Rianna.
    Androl and Emarin wore weaves that gave them the faces of Nensen and Kash, two of Taim’s cronies. Jonneth looked very unlike himself, wearing the face of a nondescript Darkfriend, and he played the part well, skulking behind and carrying their gear. One would never have seen the good-natured Two Rivers man in that hawk-faced man with the greasy hair and nervous manner.
    They moved at a brisk pace along the back lines of the Shadow’s army on the Heights. Trollocs hauled bundles of arrows forward; others left the lines to feast on piles of corpses. Cookpots boiled here. That shocked Pevara. They were stopping to eat? Now?
    Only some of them, Androl sent. It’s common for human armies too, though these moments don’t make it into the ballads. The fighting has lasted all day, and soldiers need energy while fighting. Usually, you rotate in three batches. Your front lines, your reserves, and your off-duty—troops who will trudge away from the fight and eat as quickly as they can before grabbing a little sleep. Then back to the front lines.
    She’d once seen war differently. She’d imagined every man committed every moment of the day. A true battle, however, was not a sprint; it was an extended, soul-grinding trudge.
    It was late afternoon already, approaching evening. To the east, below the Heights, battle lines extended far in both directions along the dry riverbed. Many thousands of men and Trollocs fought back and forth there. Large numbers of Trollocs fought there, but others were